Use Case: Create CMF Topic

Actor

Overview

One of the ways you manage the structure of a CMF site is through
the use of CMF Topics. Often a site is comprised of a large amount
of content through which visitors are able to navigate. A Topic
allows you to create a dynamic view onto the available content
enabling visitors to drill down into that content.

Within each Topic can be configured a set of Criteria which
constrain the list of content that appear when viewing the Topic.
Topic Criteria can be based upon any of the data or meta-data that
comprise your content.

Note that one useful meta-datam on which to base a Topic Criteria is
"Subject," which is generally configured to allow a set of
categories to be chosen when creating new content. These categories
can then be used in a Topic Criteria to enable visitors to view
categorized content. A standard pattern is to create a number of
Topics which each correspond to a category.

Another example of a useful Topic is one which constrains your
content by creation or modification date in order to display all
recently changed content.

Assumptions

Procedure

Select "Folder Contents" from the actions box and navigate
to the folder which will contain the Topic.

Click the "New..." button, which brings up the "Add Content"
form allowing you to choose among the various content types
that you are allowed to create. Select "Topic," type in an
ID which will be used to identify the Topic in the future,
and click "Add."

The system will create the topic and present you with its
"Edit Topic" form, which allows you to supply metadata about
the topic.

Title

the name which will be displayed to visitors.

Description

a brief paragraph describing the intended purpose of the
Topic. The description will be used to annotate the topic
object when it is included in another display (e.g., the
view of its parent folder).

Acquire criteria from parent

when creating topic hierarchies[2], allows sub-topics to
refine the search criteria they acquire from their
parents.

Click "Change" to save the changes you've made. The system
will then show the default view of your new Topic, including
the list of content which match the Topic's criteria and
the list of the Topic's Criteria.

Note that since you have not yet set up any criteria, the
Topic will match all content objects in the catalog.

To constrain the Topic's matches, select "Criteria" in the actions
box. Create a new Criterion by filling out the "Add Criteria" form,
which has the following fields:

Field id

a drop-down list containing the names of all indexed
attributes. Select the value corresponding to the field
to be searched by the criterion.

Criteria type

the kind of search to apply. The standard types include:

String Criterion

matches all content objects for which the specified
field in the content contains the supplied value

Integer Criterion

matches ranges or exact values for fields which are
represented as whole numbers

List Criterion

matches content objects for which the specified field
contains one of a set of string values.

Friendly Date Criterion

applies a range search to a date field, relative to the
current time.

Click "Add" to create the criterion and add it to the
Topic.

Fill in the value of the "Criterion value" and click "Save
changes." You may continue to add criteria which each further
constrain the content matched by the Topic.

To view the content matching the current set of criteria,
select "View" from the actions box.

Notes

..[1] Like "Create Folder", this is not solely the prerogative of
Site Managers; Content Creators build topics.